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Flashbacks and Lingering Questions for Survivors

TUCSON — Randy Gardner had stopped by Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s community event on Saturday to thank her for supporting the health care overhaul when he heard the “boom, pop, pop, pop” and the cries of the wounded. Ducking for cover, he found the scene more than terrifying. He found it unbelievably familiar.

Mr. Gardner, 60, had survived a shooting once before. On May 4, 1970, he was a student at Kent State University when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fired on students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four people. He was in the crowd that day and ran for his life, 75 yards, before diving to the ground.

It was a landmark event for the country, but for Mr. Gardner it was a personal tragedy that stole a young woman from his English class, Allison Krause. And Saturday’s killings, which left him with a bullet through the right foot, took him right back.

“These types of experiences,” he said, “you change.”

Three of the survivors had very different reasons for attending Ms. Giffords’s “Congress on Your Corner” event on Saturday, but they were each caught in the storm of bullets just the same.

Bill D. Badger, a retired Army colonel, saw television footage of sleeping travelers in a snowy airport and broke down, flashing back to the memory of bodies after Saturday’s shooting rampage.

They sit at odds on the political spectrum — Mr. Badger is a lifelong Republican, Mr. Fuller a liberal, and Mr. Gardner a solid Democrat — but these three men, with fresh wounds and wincing limps, now share the same challenges of adjusting to life as survivors: flashbacks, panic attacks, and midnight questions about justice, courage and luck.

“When you’re six feet away from a 9-year-old girl and you live and they don’t,” Mr. Gardner said, “it’s hard.”

Of the 14 people who were wounded, 6 remain hospitalized, including Ms. Giffords.

Mr. Gardner, who left Portland, Ore., for Tucson in 2005, escaped by running to the parking lot in a crouch, hiding behind cars and taking refuge in a Walgreen’s. He said he felt “a heaviness” as his right tennis shoe slowly filled with blood. He was released from the hospital on Sunday with a large bandage and crutches.

He keeps thinking about a conversation he had in line with a thoughtful, grandmotherly woman named Phyllis. Phyllis Schneck, 79, was killed, he learned later.

“Night is hard — the quietness, and the ruminating about it,” he said inside his home, on a sleepy cul-de-sac ringed by mountains. “I had that feeling of sadness and guilt that, you know, I should have done more, why didn’t I help out more,” he said.

“Everyone wants to have that John Wayne moment, but. ...”

Mr. Gardner worked for decades as a mental health counselor, so the troubling signs investigators have uncovered about the man charged in the shootings, Jared L. Loughner, seem sadly familiar. Mr. Gardner sees large gaps in the country’s mental health system that leave “a lot of lone wolves leading very unhappy lives.”

Photo

For Randy Gardner, the shooting on Saturday was not the first time he has been present for a violent episode in United States history. He was at Kent State in 1970.Credit
Joshua Lott for The New York Times

But he also understands the challenges that he is likely to face as he struggles with survivor’s guilt.

He said he planned to go to a memorial service for the dead Wednesday night, though he typically avoids those kinds of events. “I hate the word ‘closure,’ but they can help with bringing people together,” he said.

For Mr. Gardner, like many others in Tucson, the area’s divisive political culture that saw Ms. Gifford, a Democrat, struggle to victory last year forms the backdrop to the shooting. He considers himself more liberal than Ms. Giffords, but he respected her for standing up to Republicans on issues like immigration, and especially health care.

“I was going to tell her to be strong, that her vote meant something to a lot of people and there was no reason to waver,” he said.

Mr. Fuller, the limousine driver, also supported Ms. Giffords but he went to see her for different reasons.

He became interested in politics only recently, and fell hard for liberal causes. He sends e-mail blasts denouncing “Replundercans.”

On Saturday, he stopped by Ms. Giffords’s event after his weekly tennis game expecting to see protesters, whom he had seen at previous Giffords events.

“I wanted to give her a boost and to protect her from the Tea Party crime syndicate and to shout them down,” he said. “I can make a lot of noise.”

There were no protesters, but he got into a heated argument with another person waiting to meet Ms. Giffords. An aide to Ms. Giffords, Gabriel Zimmerman, quickly stepped in to break them up. Mr. Zimmerman was killed in the shootings.

Mr. Fuller was shot in the left knee, and a bullet grazed his back. He was released from the hospital on Monday, but he has struggled to adjust to a life that feels inalterably different.

The night after the shooting, he could not fall asleep. He found himself drawn to the words of the Declaration of Independence, which he memorized while he was unemployed and living in a trailer in Boise, Idaho, in 1980.

The language soothed him that night. But he still has flashes of anger.

“Recognizing his existence is a waste,” he said of Mr. Loughner. “I don’t like his face.”

Unlike the others, Mr. Badger, the retired colonel and lifelong Republican, disagreed with many of Ms. Giffords’s beliefs.

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Bill Badger was slightly wounded in the shooting, but also was one of several people who pinned the gunman to the ground.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Mr. Badger stopped by Ms. Giffords’s event after visiting a local car show — his 1973 white Jaguar would have wowed the place, he thought — planning to grill her on her support for what he calls “Obamacare.”

As he was chatting with people in line about the gorgeous weather, the shooting began. A bullet grazed his head, leaving him bleeding. When the shots ended, he was one of several people who pushed the gunman, pinning him to the ground.

He describes the encounter with militarylike precision: he hit the gunman with his right hand, and then held down the gunman’s left arm.

He is less vivid talking about his own psychological state after the attack. He dismissed questions about therapy, saying that he is “mentally sound.” He will attend memorial ceremonies to show respect for the victims.

But anguish has sneaked up. He spent only a few hours at the hospital receiving stitches for his wound; he thought he was coping. But then he saw television video of an airport where people were sleeping on the floor awaiting delayed flights. He thought of the crumpled bodies he had seen.

“I just wasn’t ready for that shock,” he said. “I just broke down.”

The survivors and the victims families will struggle in their own ways for years to come, said Carol Gaxiola, director of Homicide Survivors, a Tucson-based victims advocacy group.

Ms. Gaxiola, whose own daughter, Jasmine, was killed 11 years ago, said she had spoken with families of all six of the dead.

“Your entire sense of safety has been totally invaded and violated,” she said. “It’s like riding a wild wave of emotions — it’s up and down and very little respite.”

Of course, the survivors constantly remind themselves how lucky they are. The families of the dead are struggling with far deeper pain.

Ross Zimmerman, the father of the Giffords aide who was killed, said he spent the first day in shock, barely able to speak. He cannot sleep through the night, and often wakes up in tears.

“What kind of went through my mind was now, maybe, I’ve just got to wait out the rest of my life until I die,” he said in an interview.

Slowly, he has begun to heal himself by speaking with friends and family about his son. But he said part of his method of coping has been facing the stark truth.

“Gabe’s dead; he’s not coming back,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do about it, damn it.”

Kassie Bracken contributed reporting from Tucson.

A version of this article appears in print on January 13, 2011, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: For Survivors, Flashbacks and Questions That Visit at Night. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe